I wonder if this professor thinks the victims of Newtown were exploited to justify gun control? And for the record, I’m not saying there’s any comparison between 9/11 and Newtown, because there isn’t.

Jenna Neumann of the College Fix reports.

Feminist Professor Says 9/11 Widows Exploited To Justify Bombing Afghanistan

Images and interviews of grieving wives who lost their husbands in the 9/11 terrorist attacks were exploited to wage war in Afghanistan, a University of Michigan professor of feminist studies argued in a recent guest lecture.

These women became the “ideal vessels of pathos,” according to Dr. Ruby Tapia, who spoke Thursday at Kalamazoo College for its annual American Studies Lecture.

Americans banded behind these women, wanting to express feelings of hatred and sorrow with them, she said.

“These pregnant widows were expected to take the lead after the attacks,” Tapia said. “(The women acted as agents) upon which the public could project feelings of anger, grief, and fear. They served as the invaluable breeder of patriotic fervor.”

Tapia used the graphic novel “American Widow,” written by Alissa Torres, to frame her thesis. Torres was pregnant when she lost her husband in one of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Following the media coverage of the grieving wives and mothers-to-be after the tragedy, Torres declined media requests and shied away from any press coverage.

Tapia praises Torres’ opposition, which the professor described as resisting the “gendered politics of a hypermediated national trauma.”

Constantly in the public eye, Tapia argues that the tragedy of these women was expropriated to justify war in Afghanistan. Generating a national sentiment of hatred that these mothers were left vulnerable, war became justifiable, she argued.

“The nursery can also be used to justify bombs,” she said.